I feel sorry for Chan actually. Skate Canada has been throwing these crazy marks at him for a while and I don't think he likes it cuz it just turns people against him. It's not like he asked for it eh.

But how is it showing good skating skills if you're falling in your footwork?

Chan isn't the only skater with good skating skills. Oda & Rippon are both extremely skilled in this department. Did you see the brackets leading up to Oda's 3A? And unlike Chan, he actually landed it. What kind of a performance can you give when you spend half of the time with your butt on the ice? Would any other skater in this competition been held up as massively as Chan was with this turd of a performance?

It's ridiculous that someone can be within gold medal distance when bombing nearly half of the required elements. Especially when others skated so well.

Oda and Rippon are both excellent in skating skills. However, compared to Chan, Rippon seems slower, Oda seems somewhat lacking in choreographical complexity. Who am I to judge? I am just stating my humble opinion, if you ask me. Chan's skating (not jumping) wowed me even with the three falls. I can only say it did not surprise me nor anger me when his PCS remained the highest.

We know about the CoP and the defenders of it for certain skaters, but Can anyone tell me what Patrick did on the PLUS side that other skaters did not? I mean, like Preaubert and Fernandez did not do any of the 'things' that Patrick was so good at as he wiped up the ice?

I can understand FALLs being a minus in the Tech, but they also disrupt the choreographed program. No? Should not the PC scores show this as minus also?

BTW. I'm a big fan of Patrick and to be honest, this was not his night and the scores were ludicrous.

The new "choreographical step sequence" is only skated in the FS so Chan did fall on a required step sequence.

I watched the performance on the Youtube again, and I think he successfully completed his required step sequence, which was the one with extensive one-foot skating. Under the revised rule, only one step sequence is counted in the short, am I right (Note: I am not familiar with it)?

Number of falls is irrelevant with respect to Skating Skills. Someone could fall 6 times yet has amazing SS. But PE should take a hit depending on recovery and etc.

hmmm. You seem to be implying that Preaubert, Fernandez and others did not have SS. We had lengthy discussions on Skating Skills when CoP firs appeared, and we reached no conclusion as to what they were and the breakdown in the rules are so vague. We decided it could be used as an adjunct for the 6.0 system to keep favorites from meltdowns.

hmmm. You seem to be implying that Preaubert, Fernandez and others did not have SS. We had lengthy discussions on Skating Skills when CoP firs appeared, and we reached no conclusion as to what they were and the breakdown in the rules are so vague. We decided it could be used as an adjunct for the 6.0 system to keep favorites from meltdowns.

Other than the automatic deductions in the Tech, we do not know whether judges consider Falls as poor performance. But if a ballerina falls in Swan Lake and I've seen it happen, the performance is not good and the audience lets her know it, and that is not even a competition. It's obvious too in skating - poor performance.

Base value of 4 toe is much higher than 3 lutz even with mistake under the current system, precisely because people complained last year about skaters not taking enough risk. So now Chen adds 4 toe in his program, the same people now stick it to him b/c he falls...and complained about him being overscored...

I can only say you got what you asked. You want 4 toe in SP? then don't complain if things don't go your way.

I find it hilarious that you said "sometimes I really wish some skating fans would shut up and learn a bit more about the sport before complaining about anything and everything aside from jumping counting and stating the obvious" when you don't seem to know what you're talking about. You can't even determine that Chan fell on his footwork sequence without looking at the protocol, when it is obvious he did if you watched the performance.

I've going to have to use the "eyeroll" emotion a lot in this thread, I can see.

Part of the reason why people stopped risking Quads was because of (A.) how much the Double Axel was worth in comparison to the Quad, and (B.) How overpenalized downgrades used to be. If you did a Quad, but underrotated it, you used to get less points than if you had done an easy 2Axel. A top skater could easily get 4.5+ points from a Double Axel whereas an underrotated Quad, a move which takes FAR more energy and places FAR more stress on the skater going into their performance, would only get 4 points at most (and likely a lot less given that other errors on the landing are more frequent for a Quad).

Even if you did land the Quad, fully rotated and cleanly, it wouldn't necessarily help you. Doing a Quad takes more energy and forces your mind to focus on that different technique, which can make the rest of the jumps in your program more difficult. Doing a good Double Axel out of a transition easily got you 4.5+ points, allowed you to focus more energy on other jumps in the program so that they get better +GOE and are more consistent, and also meant there was extra incentive to make a case for your Transitions program component.

The new rules have fixed the problem of how underrotations are scored and also increased the point difference between the Quad and easier jumps. However, the new rules have also been changed such that MESSY jumps are penalized less. This is a big problem because the penalties for mistakes were already too lenient in many cases! So now we will see people falling on Quads and receiving more points for that jump than if they had done a good Triple Flip.

Now, back to your post, Patrick didn't just fall on a Quad. If that had been his only mistake and he had skated the rest of the program up to his full potential, then I probably would have put him ahead of Adam Rippon. That wasn't his only mistake, though. He fell on his Triple Axel (a tilted, barely rotated attempt), which really sucked the life out of the program. And then when he was starting to get it back on the footwork sequence, he fell again and the performance was left with an extremely unsavory aftertaste.

You can't even determine that Chan fell on his footwork sequence without looking at the protocol, when it is obvious he did if you watched the performance.

I was distracted at that precise moment with when two people required my immediate attention and I haven't been able to review what happened on tape. I didn't see, what do you expect me to say? In any event, I am not alone here in saying I am not sure re: the 3rd fall in case you haven't noticed. A regular poster here who reviewed the youtube clip posted here to say he/she believes the element was already completed and contradicted your admant observation.

When the protocol comes out and the panel determined the fall wasn't part of the element, would you then apologize for your very impolite and accusatory dismeanor?

I can understand FALLs being a minus in the Tech, but they also disrupt the choreographed program. No? Should not the PC scores show this as minus also?

IIRC it used to reflect the fall in the one point deduction and PCS (or was it GOE?) and then people whined that it was double jeopardy and unfair and they changed the rules. I could be mistaken. There are too many changes over the last eight or so years for me to keep up lol